BRITT TOWERY: Even the horrific past must remain with us

SAN ANGELO, Texas - Anyone remember who said: "Monsters exist, but they are too few in numbers to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are (those) ready to believe and act without asking questions."

He was Primo Levi, born in Turin, Italy, around the time that Benito Mussolini was coming to power.

Levi was deeply concerned at how easy it was for people to forget the injustices of the past. As a young man he joined in the dictator's fascist youth teams. It was something everyone was expected to do. Mussolini is considered the founder of fascism.

When Levi graduated from college, his diploma listed him as "of the Jewish race."

Not able to find work due to being a Jew, the family took to the hills. That is, they joined a growing partisan resistance movement against the fascist regime.

Mussolini (1883-1945) before he became dictator was a draft dodger and evaded military service until World War I when he became a corporal in the Italian army, same rank Adolf Hitler held in that war. He rose to power in the 1920s and in 1935 invaded Ethiopia, inspiring Hitler as he was gaining power in Germany. The two dictators signed a nonmilitary alliance in 1936.

That was the Italy of Primo Levi. In 1944 he and more than 600 Italian Jews were transported to Auschwitz, the infamous concentration camp where 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, died. (Other groups died there including Polish political prisoners, Soviet prisoners of war, gypsies, homosexuals, even several hundred Jehovah's Witnesses.)

One survivor, whom I knew, was Corrie ten Boom. In one of the books on her life, "The Hiding Place," she said: "Surely there is no more wretched sight (than that of) the human body unloved and uncared for."

A year later the camp was liberated by the Red Army and Levi was one of the few Italian Jews to survive.

Levi was encouraged to write his biography by his wife, Lucia, whom he met after the war. His first novel, "If This Is a Man," met with little success. A dozen years later the book was translated and publish in America under the title, "Survival at Auschwitz." He wrote more memoirs and poetry while speaking at hundreds of schools about his experiences during the Holocaust.

It must be remembered that it was at Auschwitz that Josef Mengele's horrific scientific experiments were performed, such as the studies of twins. If one twin died, Mengele would immediately kill the other to carry out comparative autopsies.

Men and women who endured those years of uncertainty are all almost gone.

The BBC estimates that there are approximately 500 survivors of Nazi death camps and ghettos still living in Britain.

Their story must not stop with their passing from the scene.

Levi, like many others, had a deep concern for coming generations to never forget how easy it is to be fooled by power-hungry leaders and the blind dupes who carry out their commands without question.

The late Iris Chang in her book, "The Rape of Nanking," wrote: "As the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel warned years ago, to forget a holocaust is to kill twice." Wiesel reminded us: "For the dead and the living, we must bear witness."

And in the same spirit as Primo Levi, Yehuda Bauer wrote: "Thou shalt not be a victim, thou shalt not be a perpetrator, but, above all, thou shalt not be a bystander."